Queen Maxima of The Netherlands named a new rose (after herself) at the 50th celebration of the Rosarium Winschoten on June 13.
Rosa Queen Maxima. Photo: Hans Homburg for the Netherlands Rose Society.
The Rosarium shows more than 20,000 roses of 320 different species during the summer months. During spring visitors can enjoy 7000 rhododendrons in flower. Winschoten is in the northern province of Gronigen (where the explorer Abel Tasman was born). A Rose Festival will be held on July 1 and 2.
Submissions to the New Zealand exhibition of botanical art, being shown as part of the debut Worldwide Day of Botanical Art next year, close on November 17. The exhibition will take place at Auckland Regional Botanic Gardensfrom March 30 to July 1, 2018. Find the New Zealand submission information here.
Chelsea Flower Show’s Plant of the Year for 2017 is a dwarf mulberry, ‘Charlotte Russe’, from 89-year-old Japanese plant breeder Hajime Matsunaga. It has taken more than 40 years for Matsunaga-san to create the compact bush that fruits over a long season – 30 years of hybridising and then a decade of propagating before the plant arrived in Europe to be turned into commercial quantities – as it was, the UK supplier’s first batch of 2,500 plants was sold out in a week!
‘Charlotte Russe’ fruits in its first year and subsequently on new and old wood. It is self-fertile.
Runner-up was Salvia ‘Chrystal Blue’. Spreading to 45cm and flowering at 60cm high, the plant has a neat, compact habit topped with light sky-blue flowers. And third was a floriferous hibiscus with eye-catching orange flowers, ‘Petit Orange’. See the full shortlist.
The Chatsworth Garden Show is a new RHS event (held at the stately Derbyshire home of the Duke of Devonshire), read a review here.
And, finally, read about one of the most venomous plants in the world – the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree (Dendrocnide excelsa) from, you guessed it, Australia, a place seemingly full of things that can kill you!
Sandra's Garden 